Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by psswrdshmashwrd 3932 days ago
I agree thorium isn't without its problems, but the end byproduct of a lftr reactor is plutonium.
1 comments

LFTR's produce 239Pu (among a mess of other stuff), that's the stuff that goes BOOM in nuclear bombes, not 238Pu that glows warmly to make power for spacecraft.
As Jobu points out from Wikipedia: he second proliferation resistant feature comes from the fact that LFTRs produce very little plutonium, around 15 kg per gigawatt-year of electricity ... This plutonium is also mostly Pu-238. According the article this seems like quite a bit more than is currently being produced, is it not viable for use in RTGs for some reason? Or is the cost of a LFTR over the course of a year less cost effective than the current method of Np to Pu?

I have very little knowledge of the science here, I'm just not sure what all I'm missing.